And Yet
by jlgrant
Summary: The Opera is over. The Ghost has been set in chains. The world is as it should be. And yet... Told as a series of vignettes. Work in progress.


This came to be when I was struggling with writer's block on the latest chapter of my other fic _If I Could Fly. _It's short and sweet, but I wanted to share it to see where this goes!

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"_Why break the heart that never beat from love?"_

— Mervyn Peake

**Chapter One**

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The Blessed

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He had thought it was the end. That the insidious hum of the organ had ceased when the shackles had finally found his wrists. That the concluding cords of the opera had played out as the boots collided with his guts and knuckles cracked into his demon face. That the blood oozing from his flesh was the last crimson curtain call. He had hoped that the sack they forced over his head had been the final, eternal darkness.

She had sailed away, blue hues of innocence spiriting her and her sweet song into the light – into a life beyond his gaze. Redness dripped from his temples and soaked his hair – but in the grimy light of the sack his lips had formed into a smile. Her freedom had saved them both. Their souls were twisted together – made of melody, flesh and fire. It was right that his fate was to be garrotted by the neck while the whole world watched and that hers was to hold her pure, beloved face up to rays of a splendid sun.

His cage was at the end of a black corridor. Where spiders legs whispered against cobwebs and shackled ghosts clanked and groaned in tandem lines of two – their long, white beards of melancholy causing many a draft to chill the skin of those still living. The creature in the cage traced the contours of his distorted flesh with a grimy finger. He ground his teeth together and cried soundlessly, his tears falling as dry wisps of silver dust. Only once did he imagine tender white fingers touching him there, and he recoiled further into the wall at the thought of it. Digging a clenched knuckle into his head.

Footsteps, that had hitherto been silent, stopped with a slight scratching against the floor at the bars of his cell. From within the hollow darkness a bloodshot amber eye rolled towards the intruder, the lids surrounding it forming into a thin scowl.

"You've a visitor." Said the slim-built police constable with a smirk, brave in the presence of the steel bars. He had not been so a month prior, when the creature had almost escaped and approached him, towering above the lad in all of his dark, melancholy glory. Then, the young man had been content to cower in a corner and shake, holding up his truncheon with quivering fingers and ordering the beast to "stay back!"

The young man did not spit on departing, which was his usual custom. Something made him reserved, almost _shy_. He looked away from the caged demon and towards the visitor who remained silent in the ghostly shadows.

"Ten minutes, mademoiselle. That's all."

"I understand," Said a calm, tender voice.

The boy left. She remained where she was, comfortably submerged in the smoky arms of shadow. And then she stepped forward, a shaft of daylight from the high window picked out carefully a flash of her brilliant eyes and the sad curve of her bloodless lips. She gave a sob and sank to the floor next to the cell. She was so close that if they both extended a hand their fingers would touch. Her knees cracked as they collided with the hard stone floor, the rest of her body thinking nothing of her fragile bones. The bones he loved so dearly.

The silence was thick. So deep that her heartbeat echoed in the shallow space, making an obscure timepiece by which to measure the minutes. The sound of her breathing added a steady breeze to her throbbing pulse. From within the cage he studied her, she was not altered at all, but seemed consumed by a delicate grief that clung to edges of her long lashes – making her large eyes heavy and deep with sorrow.

She was not looking at him; she withdrew a gloved finger and began to trace lethargic patterns in the earth and soil of the filthy floor. He watched her, mesmerized. She looked like one of the many vagrant women littering the streets of Paris, clad in rags and shadowy regret. In the mute darkness it was hard to remember that her hair was shining auburn – not decaying grey.

"_You said you loved me_…" she whispered, she closed her eyes against the soft echo of her words. There was an intake of breath, like a sob. With a flourish of anger she removed her glove and wiped away her tears. "But what was I to do with such a love? Such a violation of trust and humanity – you deceived me, made me believe…" She fell silent; he heard her sniff, "… how was I ever supposed to love you in return?"

"_Then, you did not_?" his voice, weak and dry, rasped out of the darkness.

She did not answer, silence smothered her mouth with corpse-like hands.

Realisation fell on him softly, as the frozen rooftop yields to the gaze of the dawn. He saw his fingers coiled around a murderous lasso, a voice creeping out into the darkness to tempt a desolate soul, his spirit composing music to ravish a fragile heart. He closed his eyes, and could not open them.

"Whatever I feel, it is buried – I cannot find it, not while I remain here…"

His eyes opened. And he knew she could sense his torment. Her voice changed, finding a strength he did not know she could possess. "I am going away from Paris… for a while… alone."

That last word kindled something inside him, a recollection of hope.

"_Why did you come here?"_

"I don't know, and yet…" she paused, and it seemed that she would cry "…it seemed impossible to leave without seeing you. Without hearing your voice."

He breathed deeply – inhaling the sentiments. The glittering sensation of her presence washed away the soil that buried him.

"_Go."_ He said. "_Go, now!"_

She did not leave. She sat silently for a long time, and would not grant him the peace of living for him only as a memory. He felt her soft gaze trying to pick out his features in the dark – something by which to remember him when she was alone in the sun. When she spoke again her voice was low, so low that Erik heard it first with his spine, and then his ears.

"_Do not remain here, Erik. Do not die… do not let them take your body and your soul – survive… please, survive…"_

And then with a swish of silk and a slight crack of limb, she _was_ a memory. Something lay forgotten in the filth, he extended his hand and clutched the small glove in his long fingers. He brought the treasured token to his face and inhaled.

Her scent lingered for days afterwards, the gentle aroma of rose shunning the abject and bitter muck. He picked out the soft pink petals with his senses and fed off them daily. He gorged on the silver threads of recollection until he was sick with anger and obsession, until his fingers trembled with remorse and love. She had given him a drug that revived the dead parts of him. A suffocating hunger that demanded more with every breath he took.

But he deserved this fate. He had chosen to die, for that was the only way she would ever truly be free.

And yet…


End file.
